


he's a doll, get the door

by ryyves



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Domestic, Fluff, Healing, Nureyev Healing, Nureyev Talks About His Feelings, Other, Post-Man In Glass, feat. extremely heavy-handed symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-14 00:14:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29410332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryyves/pseuds/ryyves
Summary: There is nowhere for either of them to run, no doors for Peter to leave open when he needs to get out. And sometimes the need still stirs restlessly in him, because everyone he has ever loved, he has left.So if he wants to stay, if he wants to stay and try and love like it’s a choice rather than a feeling, which part of him is the lie?Juno has faced his demons. Peter tries not to look at his.
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Comments: 11
Kudos: 57
Collections: TPP Valentine's Exchange





	he's a doll, get the door

**Author's Note:**

  * For [prydon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/prydon/gifts).



> Title from a mishearing of "Animals" by KAWALA.
> 
> Based on your prompt: **Jupeter + theme of “insecurities.”** Happy Valentine's Day!

Here the nights are longer. Here no suns ever rise and a billion stars spark across a battlefield of dark matter. The gentle lullaby of the ship chases him into sleep, running through his dreams with a dark and watchful eye.

Peter Nureyev is used to keeping to ship time, to waking in the dark and eating in the dark and planning in the dark under artificial lights so bright they have to recharge every time the ship stops for fuel. He is used to the long run of anonymity a cruise ship or a repurposed battleship afford him, and he is used to the night lights and the ship-wide lights-out in all the hallways at precisely eleven-thirty. This is to say Peter is used to the sleeplessness, the heavy waking, the long hours digging through his comms while the day makes no indication of passing around him.

He is used to keeping odd hours. On his own, he would keep his own schedule until he landed on the next planet, persona in order, and went out into the artificial day to pick out his wardrobe. 

But on the _Carte Blanche_ , hours are almost regular. Buddy wakes early and talks loud enough in the kitchen that the rest of them wake, too, well before their alarms. By the time Peter puts himself together enough to leave his room, Jet is making a full pot of coffee and Rita has blue light on her face. (Sometimes Peter passes Rita’s room in the night and sees a blue glow under the door, hears the heavy tapping of a keyboard.) Then it’s the first Family Meeting, in which Buddy starts talking before Peter’s had a chance to down more than a single gulp of his coffee. It wasn’t easy at first, and if Peter is being honest, which he rarely is, it still isn’t. Memorizing the routines of everyone aboard took most of his energy for the first week, and fitting himself among them lasted through the third. He watches his step; he watches where his fingers land. He is still thinking about fingerprints, about leaving his mark when he goes rogue, his DNA on every surface of the ship.

When he wears gloves all day, Juno asks if he’s okay.

He’s okay. He’s always okay.

But Juno is sharp, and he keeps his eye on Peter anyway.

Sometimes when Peter wakes in the night, and he often does, because he learned young how to wake at the slightest footstep and sleep through every creak in the roof, he gets out of bed. He puts his feet on the carpet and feels dizzy. If he’s fortunate, the body beside him won’t stir. He can rise and tiptoe into out into the hall and head to the living room, where he can sit alone, staring out the window, and pretend he isn’t thinking anything. He presses his cheek against a window and counts the stars. He gets up to three hundred before the boredom sets in. It is the closest thing he can get to privacy, spare a few snatched moments during job prep on an alien moon. 

And if he isn’t lucky, if Juno opens his soft, bleary eyes, and reaches out, and says, _’Reyev, where’re you going?_ Peter can’t leave. Juno’s arms snake around his waist and hold tight, hold him right where his diaphragm can’t quite bring air into his lungs, soft and warm and tender and so overwhelming Peter can’t lie back down either. He sits there until Juno presses a kiss to the base of his spine, a kiss like a hot shower after a cold day, cleansing and sweet.

 _I’m not going anywhere,_ he tells Juno. Murmurs it softly, reaches back to stroke Juno’s hair. Juno hums, so of course Peter can’t leave. Juno wants him, and that is the greatest gift Peter has ever been given. He holds it like a baby bird, like a butterfly with one broken wing, delicately and desperately.

It is hard enough to want without being wanted in return. It stirs in him the impulse to run, even now, even with the way Juno looks at him and the comforting warmth that fills him because of it, even with the flirtation and the kisses, the soft, late-night conversations and Juno just back from sharpshooting practice with that wild smile on his face and the way Juno sees through him like no one in the world ever has.

He would bring Juno any star he asked for. Peter knows this the way he knows his own name. He has never loved a man so quickly, so totally, and every love he’s ever had has been quick and total. 

Every house he ever slept in had ghosts in its walls, and everyone he’s ever slept beside has kept a ghost in their arms. Sometimes that ghost was him. He drifted through every room like he was outside of it, every gala and soiree and interrogation, glib and charming and not at all himself. Not the man with haunted eyes who smeared foundation across his face every morning and dusted his cheeks with blush and drew sharp wings on his eyelids in a heavy, unrelenting black. He adorned his ears and neck with gold until it almost made up for the fact that he never smiled in any mirror.

He doesn’t always sleep in Juno’s room. That’s asking too much. It’s asking Juno to be okay with him, to tolerate his presence every moment without suffocating, to want him all of the time. It is hard enough, sometimes, to be wanted at all. To see himself as Juno sees him, without the baggage of all his scars, all his heartbreaks, all his teeth out. And sometimes, even now, it takes everything in him to ask if he can stay.

When things were easier, when the rush of infatuation and the thrill of flirtation carried him above every insecurity, he was bold enough to ask. He entered every room like he belonged there. The click of heels in a hotel lobby, the sim-wind whistling low between buildings and through the flaps of his coat. Before he hung his heart on a star, he called himself almost brave. Before a door closed in the night, the hallway’s dim light falling on him for the length of a breath. Peter Nureyev is only worth something as long as he’s useful. While Juno was pouring out his heart, Peter was thinking about offering the same back at him.

He deflected. He said, instead, _I think we can move past that_.

He said, _Consider it forgiven_.

And Juno had sighed. His eyes dipped to Peter’s lips as he bit his own, but he didn’t kiss him. Peter reached out and took his hands, scarred and blunt and so warm. And they sat like that, sharing space, holding the trembling thing between them, breathing into it, Juno a gift Peter couldn’t quite believe he deserved.

* * *

It is on one of his disrupted nights that Peter finds himself in the kitchen in the dark, the stove light on and nothing else. His bare hands are shadows in front of him. He is barefoot, mostly to avoid Buddy’s reprimand in the morning, and he slides his feet as he moves through the room, because disapproving eyes still threaten to shatter him.

He is opening cabinets slowly and using his thumb to muffle the sound of their closing. He is pulling out jars, considering the practicality of eating their contents with a spoon or even his fingers. With no one to see him, he doesn’t have to worry about appearances. He doesn’t have to hold up the façade. He is in his pajamas—a slip and a pair of short, silk shorts underneath—and he keeps pushing hair out of his face.

The truth is they haven’t moved past it. The truth is that sometimes Peter gets out of bed and goes for a walk through the cramped ship because it gives him a sense of control. Because after a lifetime of running, it is hard to stand still. Because sometimes when Juno’s breath catches, Peter waits for an ultimatum. There is nowhere for either of them to run, no doors for Peter to leave open when he needs to get out. And sometimes the need still stirs restlessly in him, because everyone he has ever loved, he has left. 

So if he wants to stay, if he wants to stay and try and love like it’s a choice rather than a feeling, which part of him is the lie?

He never wholly unbecomes Peter Nureyev. He never quite shakes his own vices, just assumes new ones with every new name and pretends they’re the only ones that matter. There are many parts of himself he can erase, but the core of him, the ugly truth, is not so easily removed. If it were, he would remove it forever and live as a different, better person. Peter Worthless, Peter Nothing, Peter Nobody Worth Remembering, half because he made himself so and half because he always has been.

He examines a jar of peanut butter in the low light and uncaps it. The heavy scent fills the room. When he opens the drawer of utensils, they clink like jewels, and he thinks about the sound of a spoon scraping the jar, thinks about Buddy chastising him like a child for waking her. He digs a finger into the jar, lifts it to his mouth, and scrapes the peanut butter off with his teeth. He chews thoughtfully. It’s sweet and sticky, sweeter still because it’s tasted in a stolen moment.

“So this is where you ran off to,” says Juno’s voice. It’s low, just louder than a whisper.

Peter startles, and his chest stings. _Ran off,_ like a fugitive in the night, dastardly, heartless. Cruel at worst, thoughtless at best.

He turns. Juno stands on the opposite side of the kitchen table, hand on the back of a chair, his feet bare and his pajama shirt tucked into his shorts. He is a shadow, his eyes and the tip of his nose brushed with yellow light. His expression is unreadable. Peter is still learning this new Juno, fewer bristles and thorns and vitriol in every quip, but sharper and sweeter and surer of himself. His body seems less a thing he lives in and more a thing that he is. 

“Can’t a man get a midnight snack?” Peter says. His stomach tightens, because he doesn’t want to hear what Juno says next. _Every time you leave me is another moment I doubt you. I’ve grown but you’re the same man I knew all that time ago, and you still aren’t letting me in. When I look for you, you aren’t there._ All true, perhaps, because it takes too long for old habits to die, and all just as condemning.

When Peter Nureyev doesn’t know what to do, he disappears, whether it be to another planet, another system, another room with a door he sometimes doesn’t think to lock.

He has been thinking a lot about Juno being more present, now, because Peter checks out every day. He doodles during Family Meetings; he stargazes while he’s supposed to be researching; he blinks and doesn’t remember when the morning turned to dusk inside the ship. He doesn’t know how to stay, and that’s what scares him, because no matter what he wants, he is still guided by familiar instincts, patterns as intrinsic to him as his DNA. He shows up every morning, but is it enough? 

“No, of course you can. I just.” Juno sighs. “I woke up and the covers were tucked perfectly around me and you were gone.”

Ah. And though he knows, logically, that Juno would never say anything just to watch his insides twist, he can’t help but hear it as an accusation: _See? We’ve both done it_. Peter always comes back, but that doesn’t ease the heartbreak. He imagines Juno panicked in the middle of the night, no lights in the room and the bed empty and the ship so big, humming and rattling through the night.

Juno steps closer to Peter. “Which, of course, isn’t a big deal. I mean, you’re your own man with your own life, and I don’t have a monopoly over you, even in bed. And it was thoughtful of you to tuck me in.”

Juno’s arm flung over Peter’s waist, his leg sticking out from beneath the covers. If Peter hadn’t, Juno would have woken up cold.

“No,” says Peter. “I’m afraid I understand too well.”

“Yeah,” says Juno apologetically.

Peter scoops peanut butter out of the jar with his finger and sucks on it. He leans back against the counter. Juno stops a few feet from him and hops up onto the counter, swinging his legs. 

“Can I have some?” Juno says. Peter holds out the jar and Juno sticks his finger into it.

After a long moment, Juno says, “Has it been eating you this whole time?” Hurriedly, he continues, his voice spilling all over Peter like a waterfall. “I don’t mean you don’t have a right to still be hurt, because you do, obviously, but I don’t want to hurt you every time I get up to go to the bathroom.”

Peter says, “That’s not your responsibility. I’m an adult and I can handle my own emotions.” But he is embarrassed; he is acting a child, soothing his basest instincts, his deepest-seated fears without looking them head-on. The way Juno looked himself head-on. Those are months Peter will never know the depth of, because they are Juno’s alone, and mostly Peter knows better than to ask. Juno would tell him readily, of course, if he did, and maybe Peter would deserve it after offering his whole history to Juno on the basis of a few months’ trust, but it would be an unfair thing to demand. 

When he isn’t with Juno, he thinks a lot about boundaries, and when he is, he thinks a lot about whether he should keep his mouth shut. He keeps his emotions inside his chest, swirling and chaotic, and he tells himself he’ll label them later.

Juno said, _You have every right to be hurt. You have every right to not want to be anything more than polite acquaintances until we finish this job. I can’t take it back, and if that means you’re not able to trust me, that’s okay_. His voice was calm and steady, but Peter could hear the uncertainty, and the hope. He could see the hope in Juno’s eyes.

Juno said, _But you used my name as your reference, and I hope that counts for something_.

 _Because I like you, Nureyev. I really like you. And honestly, I finally feel like my own person, and if you’ll let me, I’d like to be that person with you_.

Bumping his knee against Peter’s arm, Juno says, “Yeah. No, I know that. Only, the thing is… you haven’t been?”

“What do you mean by that?”

Juno waves a hand in the air for emphasis, making shadows across the floor. “At dinner I had to remind you to eat.”

“Yes, I know Jet broke his back to make those vegetables.”

“And you’re not sleeping well.”

“I never have. I don’t see what this has to do with—” 

“You get out of bed at least once a night, and when you’re awake, I can tell you’re zoning out. I was trying to figure out what it was, but then I thought, it’s not my place to try to investigate you. You can tell me. If you need… anything. Reassurance or company or more alone time.”

Peter presses his lips together. The emotions building in his head threaten his composure. He can trust Juno. He can trust Juno with this and any fear. He begins slowly. “I’ll admit I have been fielding old worries. It’s nothing I can’t get through on my own, naturally.”

“And you shouldn’t have to. Listen, Nureyev, can we talk about that? About you? I told you a lot about everything, but I’m left guessing half of the time when it comes to you.”

“I’d rather not.”

Juno laughs softly. “No, of course you wouldn’t. But you still look at me like I’m going to be gone the next morning, and I know—I _know_ —that’s on me, but I don’t—Nureyev. I’m not going anywhere. And not just because I’m living on this ship with you.”

“Juno.”

“And I know I can’t convince you of anything, but I want to show you that I’ll be right there beside you when you wake up, as long as you want me.”

Long ago, on the tail end of a very messy war, a boy grew up with a father who thought him expendable. Old habits cling to life like a child to their mother, crying and digging in their feet. The boy put on personas like raincoats. He listened with rapt attention. The world was cruel and here was the promise of kindness. Of belonging. Of a world he could make his own with the wave of a hand. How could he have turned that away?

And how could he not blame himself, now, for falling for it. 

But that was long ago, now, and the future is very big. For the first time, he is letting himself plan for a world he doesn’t recognize, because there is someone to walk into it with.

Yet even now, when he sees apathy in Juno’s eyes—tired apathy, distracted apathy, end-of-argument apathy—he waits for the final door to close. He wonders when Juno will begin to turn him away in the evening. This is what Peter does. It is what he has always done. 

He fields these worries alone. He holds Juno close and keeps his mouth shut. He tells himself he’ll address them later, when he has time, when he has the presence of mind, when he is calm and collected and fully inhabiting his body, and then when they come up again he does the same dance all over again. There are things he knows he should not tell Juno, and this is the first of them: for a master thief, his heart doesn’t know the first thing about locks.

Later, he tells himself. When the blood in his ears isn’t quite so loud.

“I know you will,” he tells Juno at last.

Juno sighs, and Peter thinks that will be that. The door is still open, the night is still dark, Juno is still on the precipice because Peter Nureyev is a cliffside that never evens out. A tumble; a freefall; a cataclysm. Anyone who comes to the end of it can’t hold on long enough to stay. He is afraid to let Juno speak, because his own heart is a cruel animal.

So Peter says, quickly, “Because I trust you, Juno. I made the decision to trust you, because I believe that the truth you have told me and showed me is true, and I do.”

Juno’s hand brushes Peter’s shoulder. Peter reaches up until his fingers touch Juno’s. He holds on gently, fingers rubbing against knuckles, but it is enough to warm him.

When this moment is over, it will be over for good. And suddenly, he wants to talk.

“It’s… a very old fear,” Peter admits at length. It is night and he is looking into the shadows where the kitchen opens into the living room, and his mouth is dry. “It’s the story of my life. It’s not you.”

There is no bitterness in Juno’s voice, and Peter is listening for it. “I mean, it kind of is, isn’t it?”

“Juno, I don’t want to make a big deal out of old hurts. That wouldn’t benefit either of us. Yes, there is a part of our history that we cannot erase, but it is also merely that: history. And as I’ve made clear to you, I’m happy to put all of it behind us, and certainly I have no intention of holding it over you. Not now or ever.”

“Thanks, Nureyev.”

It’s so sweet, so soft, so sincere, and he holds Peter’s gaze in his own. Peter has to tip his head back to see Juno’s, and he finds the reversal pleasant. He thinks about Juno’s hand under his chin, those strong fingers holding him in place while he kisses him, and a shiver runs through him. Peter reaches up with the hand not touching Juno’s to stroke Juno’s plump lips. Juno closes his eyes and sighs. His lips move against Peter’s fingers.

And when he leans down and kisses Peter, his hands do cup Peter’s face, holding him in place. Peter waits until Juno closes his eyes to close his own, watching the heavy fall of those long eyelashes. Even now, Juno’s kiss is electric. Juno opens his mouth and his tongue swipes across the tips of Peter’s teeth. Peter laughs into his mouth, and he can feel it shiver all through Juno.

When the kiss breaks, Peter says, breathlessly, “Ah.”

“You like that, huh?” says Juno. “Me being taller than you?”

Peter grins and watches Juno’s breath catch. “Very much, love.”

Eyes dipping back to Peter’s lips, Juno says, “Guess I’ll have to do it more often.” He keeps his hands on Peter’s face, but the grip is softer now. Peter runs his own tongue around his teeth.

“You know I wouldn’t object.” 

Juno stretches his legs straight out and sighs, his thigh brushing Peter’s waist. “The things I do for love. Need anything from the fridge?”

Peter says, “I think I have peanut butter stuck on my teeth, and I’m worried that’s terribly unattractive.”

“You do, but that’s just life. I'll see what I can find in here.” Juno runs his fingers along Peter’s jaw before pulling them back and hopping off the counter. While Peter mourns the loss of contact, Juno opens the fridge. Harsh light spills across the room and out into the hall. Peter holds out his hand when Juno pulls out a bottle of milk, but Juno reaches around Peter to take two mugs out of a cupboard. With the fridge propped open by his hip, he pours the milk and hands a mug to Peter. 

While Peter takes a sip, Juno closes the fridge and steps in close. Peter keeps the mug close, and Juno’s breath stirs the liquid inside. Hands land on both of Peter’s forearms, and the soft, strong fingers stroke the thin hairs there. Peter shivers.

Juno is facing the stove light, and Peter thinks he sees insecurity still in his eye, so he says, “You’re doing everything perfectly. I know I’m safe with you.”

Juno laughs softly. “No one’s ever safe.”

Peter thinks Juno is going to say, _No one’s ever safe with me_ , thinks he’s going to name himself a bad-luck charm, because the Juno he knew all that time ago would have said it as a bitter quip. 

“No,” Peter muses. “I suppose no one is. And as for space piracy, well. I could name very few things more dangerous.”

“Or you could live in Hyperion,” Juno says.

Peter laughs, a soft giggle that warms the space between them. The mug is the only thing between, and, breaking eye contact, Peter sets it on the counter beside him. Still laughing, he drapes his arms around Juno’s waist, pulling him flush against his body. Tenderly, he pulls Juno’s shirt out of his trousers, then slides his milk-cold fingers across the bare skin of Juno’s spine. Juno yelps, and then he’s laughing too. Peter pulls him closer until he can feel Juno’s heartbeat. It soothes him.

Juno says, his voice rich with laughter, “Then how about this: if you’re ever worried I’m going to leave, tell me.”

“That guarantees you’ll hear me whining every day.”

“That often?” Juno is so close, his eye bright and the implant catching the stove light. He wears the eyepatch around the rest of the family, but with Peter, he leaves it on his bedside table. His eye is so intent, focused on Peter like he is the most beautiful, the most interesting, the most important person in the universe. Peter could fall into a gaze like that and never climb out.

Peter sighs. “Unfortunately, yes. I hesitated to say anything because—”

“Don’t,” says Juno. His hands rub up and down Peter’s forearms. 

“Because,” Peter continues, “I didn’t want you to feel guilty.”

“Well, you have nothing to worry about.” Juno’s fingers tighten in Peter’s hair as Juno rises on tiptoes to kiss him. With the milk still on Peter’s lips, Juno tastes sweet as anything. He tastes like nothing Peter has ever known before, intoxicating. He tastes like home.

But there are too many things left unsaid, and he has to say them now, before he falls into Juno’s tenderness and loses the moment.

“It’s not.” Peter struggles for words. “It’s not about trust, I don’t think. It’s that… sometimes, and I admit it is difficult to be honest, I’m not always sure I’m someone worth sticking around for.”

Juno reaches around Peter’s neck, pressing his wrists to the skin there. His eye is soft, and he looks at Peter like he’s the most precious thing in the world, a hundred times more dazzling than any diamond. Peter closes his eyes and one of Juno’s fingers touches his eyelashes.

“It takes a lot to get out of thinking like that,” Juno says.

Eyes still closed, Peter nods. “I’m afraid I still have a long way to go.”

“That’s okay. So did I. You’ll get there.”

And Peter says, “I have you by my side, so of course I believe I will.”

“Good,” Juno murmurs, and kisses Peter’s eyelids. “Because I believe in you, too.”


End file.
